ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Cierva C.4

The Cierva C.4 is a special kind of flying machine called a helicopter. Imagine you are playing with a toy car and you attach a propeller to the top of it. When you turn on the propeller, the car starts to lift off the ground and hover in the air. That's kind of how a helicopter works!

The Cierva C.4 was created a long, long time ago by a clever man named Juan de la Cierva. He wanted to invent a machine that could fly through the air without having to move forward like an airplane. Instead, he wanted it to just stay in one spot or move straight up and down.

So he came up with a special design that used something called a rotor. The rotor is like a big, spinning fan that sits on top of the helicopter. When it spins really fast, it creates a strong wind that blows downwards. This wind flies against the force of gravity, which allows the helicopter to lift off the ground and into the air.

The Cierva C.4 was the first helicopter to ever use this special kind of rotor design that allowed it to stay in one spot or move straight up and down without moving forward. It was a very important invention because it changed the way people thought about flying machines. Nowadays, we have all kinds of helicopters that use similar rotor designs, and they are used for lots of different things like transportation, rescue missions, and even filming movies!